The Web of SpiderMan
by Cheaplaffs
Summary: A revolutionary twist on the SpiderMan Universe. Featuring revamped Villains, Characters, and a plot full of intrigue, danger, and romance, The Web of SpiderMan will turn everything you know about Spidey upside down.
1. Power and Responsibility

"Scream! Scream for mercy!"

The sound blast whipped police cruisers and cars parked along the road flying as if caught up in a maelstrom. The villain, laughing as he rubbed the two repulsor gauntlets on his fists together to build their charge, waited until the friction between the two had grown to a point where they were being forced apart before unleashing another blast of sonic energy into the wall of a nearby building, blasting bits of rubble and debris in the path of approaching SWAT vehicles and squad cars, throwing the police into disarray.

The man, garbed in a padded black jumpsuit fitted with a number of silver mechanical pieces running down his front, back, arms and hips, all connected by wires and cables to the boxy gauntlets on his hands, powering his attack. His face was covered by the hood of his black jumpsuit, the hole in the fabric cut out for his face covered by the silver headpiece that wrapped around the circumference of his head, fitted with a visor serving some tactical purpose, most likely monitoring the suit's status and allowing him to monitor its sonic input/output. The interior of the suit was most likely laced with foam points and seams to protect him from his own sonic energy, and thus his voice came out stuffy and hollow, as if speaking through a tube, distorted by an exterior speaker system.

Warming up his generators again, the criminal prepared for another attack as a phalanx of SWAT officers carrying riot shields closed in on him.

"Is that all you losers got!?"

Shocker unleashed another blast, laughing as he did. The formation broke almost instantly, the officers mobile or far away enough to avoid the shockwave scattering in every direction to avoid another concussive blast, taking cover. The masked man laughed out loud, watching the law enforcement cower before his might. That was until he was his hard from behind, and for a moment his vision peaked and blacked out. Reality blurred, and Shocker found himself waking up after a skip in time to look up into the dented side of a parked car. He groaned and climbed to his feet, shakily.

"Let me guess. The amazing pillow man!"

He turned around, his eyes widening before curling downwards into a frown before the arrival of a masked freak he'd never seen before, one wearing red and blue in some kind of spider or bug getup. The kid cocked his head to the side in his crouched position as if curious. "Dude, the whole padded ninja thing is totally not a good look for you."

The new arrival's jokes wasted on him, Shocker laughed to himself and warmed up his gauntlets, building sonic energy. "Oh… now you asked for it!" He unleashed another wave without warning, pulverizing the overturned SWAT vehicle that seconds before his attacker had occupied. When the dust settled and there was no sign of the masked assailant, Shocker made a definitive grunting laugh and turned to face the advancing police officers once again, looking now to clear a route of escape. He took exactly three steps before gasping and hopping backwards in a defensive reflex, the masked freak reclining downwards on a thread of what looked like webbing, hanging upside down from a bent lamp post.

"How about… The Avenging Comforter!"

Roaring with frustration, Shocker lunged at his attacker with a heavy, clumsy punch, one that was easily avoided by a quick upwards sweep that transformed into a perfectly executed aerial summersault to land gracefully on the street just behind him.

Shocker slammed his gauntlets together, depressing the triggers with his thumbs to build up sonic energy to a point now that it began to vibrate violently up his arms. "Come on, you web-headed geek!"

The spider-kid spread his legs, dropped his stance low, and balled two fists, standing defiantly without fear."Bring it!"

The masked hero was first to move, leaping into the air and shooting out a web line, using the momentum of his jump to swing towards his opponent with both legs extended, moving to plant another kick.

"Right this way, loser!" The villain laughed with sadistic amusement, stamping one foot on the ground to centre his base of gravity while simultaneously punching his fists towards the ground and unleashing both armloads of sonic energy. The pavement buckled and shattered, building up in a mound before him like layers of carpet pushed up off the floor.

"Whoa!" Thinking fast, the young masked hero shot out a second web line and jerked on it, the elasticity of the line throwing himself clear of the obstacle and out onto the other side. Coming out of his arc of momentum, the kid kicked off the wall of concrete and executed a perfect roundhouse kick. The heel of his right foot struck Shocker in the jaw and the man stumbled falling to the ground. As he fell, his descent was stopped by a web line, which stuck firm to his chest plate, followed by a sudden jerk that pulled him helplessly towards an oncoming fist, shattering the glass of his visor. Grunting, the criminal was thrown to the ground.

"Now let that be a lesson to you." The costumed kid slapped his hands together as if in success. "Crime doesn't pay. And especially for guys with absolutely no sense of style. Dude. Seriously."

Shocker, coughing, lifted one suddenly charged gauntlet, his dark eyes narrowing underneath the layer of broken glass that was once his suit's visor. "Keep talking…"

The kid sighed. "This will not be fun."

The blast struck him square in the chest and the young man was thrown backwards heavily into the wall of concrete, hitting with a gasp of escaping wind and falling to the side. Sitting up, he groaned and rubbed his head, tapping it once with the palm of his hand to try to get his ears to stop ringing. "Ugh… sonic energy." He looked up at his opponent for a brief moment before pushing up off the ground and hopping to his feet. "Must be generated from those gauntlets he's wearing. Have to take them out before he can hit me with another one of those blasts. I don't think my ear drums can take another facial like that…."

"Heads up, freak!" Shocker came in low and fast; his gauntlets humming loudly with sonic energy build up. The masked hero spread his legs apart and flexed both fists, face determined under his mask. His opponent punched outwards, the gauntlet unleashing its cargo in the form of a long-distance punch which the young man ducked under just barely, letting the wave of energy pulverize the wall of concrete just behind him. A second punch whined towards him and he kicked off the ground in a horizontal barrel roll, landing to bend over backwards and allow a third to pass over his chest. Following through on his backwards summersault, he avoided a fourth by pushing off the ground with both arms. He kicked off the wall and jolted forward, flipping in mid-air over his opponent's head. While inverted parallel to the taller criminal, he unleashed two web lines that adhered themselves around the circumference of the gauntlets like a layer of sticky coating.

The masked defender landed gracefully an arm's breadth from his opponent, who sneered and shoved his fists an inch from the webbing on the kid's mask. "Fry, you dork." He depressed the triggers.

The kid closed his eyes behind his mask. "Not before you…"

Sonic energy built up, and, unable to be discharged outwards by the layer of webbing blocking the output emitters, backfired and shot up into Shocker's suit, rattling his insides and blowing out every system and safeguard programmed into his soundproof armour. In a smoking, sparking heap, the criminal groaned and collapsed.

The victorious, yet silent masked defender came forward steadily and stood over the twitching, deafened form of his former opponent, watching him for a moment, as if looking for something. He bent at the waist. Sirens blared off in the distance, approaching the trashed wreckage of the police barricade. Sparing Shocker one last glance, the kid stood quickly turned sharply and hurried off, sending out a web line to take him up into the rooftops, and, beyond that, the darkness of the night.

When the police fanned out and collected the senseless perpetrator, placed against the webs securing him to the street was a simple note, written on it in messy handwriting.

'I followed your noise complaint.

Cheers,

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man'

Above the din, a figure silhouetted against the moonlight reclined against the ledge of the skyscraper he'd perched upon and leaned his head against the darkened glass, gazing now up into the expressionless, mottled black sky of the city, still and silent.

'_I didn't ask to be anyone's hero. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. Heck, if I had the choice…'_

He looked down into the street where rescuers were pulling a young woman and her crying baby from the wreckage of an overturned car, both of them miraculously unscathed.

'No. I didn't mean for this to happen. But I chose to become the man I am. Someone once told me that with great power, comes great responsibility. I think maybe now…'

The firefighters and police officers wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and the woman looked up into the rooftops, her eyes glossy with tears but her face straight and brave before the paramedics took her away to safety.

Spider-Man stood to his full height and watched the rescuers for a moment longer before turning slowly and leaping off into the night, not once looking back.

'I'm starting understand what he meant.'


	2. Nothing to Lose

"Norman, be sensible!"

"I've tried that, West, but they've left me with no choice."

Dr. West, a scrawny man with rounded glassed followed his boss within a stride and a half, close enough to Norman Osborn that the laboratory's automatic parting doors didn't need to reopen as both men passed through them spaced as they were.

"The board has given you a reasonable offer!" He pleaded with the President, pulling his lab coat on as best he could while trying to keep up with the more heavily set, older gentleman. "We've built Oscorp from the ground up before, we can do it again!"

"There's no time for that now, Max." Norman's scratchy voice was steadfast and concrete, stubborn and unable to be convinced. "They've proven that without a doubt, this company is no longer mine, and that means it's no longer yours, either."

"There are other options, Norman! What you're talking about is killing yourself!"

While the scientist was speaking, Osborn was in the midst of unbuttoning his dress shirt, while prepping the serum machine for augmentation. The process would not only circulate the soldier serum into his bloodstream, but also augment his muscle and bone structure with a super-sensitive hormone, making him the perfect physical specimen, with strength and stamina hundreds of times that of a normal man. When the chamber hissed with escaping air pressure and slid open to accept a patient, the man looked sidelong over his shoulder at his partner and narrowed his eyes. "Then I have nothing to lose." 

Max West's lips tightened and he turned away, frustrated that in all the years he'd known Norman, that he thought for even a moment he could change the man's mind on anything.

"Then do it without me."

Osborn climbed into the machine, knowing Max well enough that he wouldn't leave, not until he was absolutely sure his best friend was truly committed to this. The former President of Oscorp looked over his creation for a time, as if admiring its handiwork, before finally looking across the laboratory at West, face steel.

"Max," He said, closing the lid with a sorrowful expression. "You're fired."

Dr. West quietly allowed the laboratory doors to slide closed as the room filled with a deep, emerald glow.

Elsewhere…

The Amazing Spider-Man. Nah, that's lame. The Sensational Spider-Man. Too many S's. The Spectacular Spider-Man. Still too many S's. The Fantastic…

"Peter, do you ever pay attention to anything?"

Green eyes narrowed in a sort of frustration and Peter smiled back at his friend, tilting his head to the side to rest into the palm of his hand, which he pushed through his hair. "Sorry, MJ. I was just…"

"Heads up, Pete." Harry Osborn toed out his cigarette and jerked a chin up towards the entrance of the school, smirking to himself. "It's your lover."

Mary Jane elbowed him and he laughed.

Peter ignored them both, watching with shy eyes as the moon-blonde haired girl climbed out of Flash Thompson's convertible and gathering up her books. Immediately the entourage of hair and nails that awaited her arrival swarmed her, and in the mob they approached the front steps. Through the chattering, gossiping chaos, though, a pair of sparkling blue eyes cascaded off the afternoon sun and somewhere in the middle, over the strands of bleach blonde hair on her shoulder, they met with Peter's, and for a moment, they were one. But then Gwen Stacy went back to normal, and it was over.

"Wow, man." Harry could barely contain himself, laughing. Apparently he'd noticed the exchange. "For a second there, I thought maybe you weren't afraid of girls anymore." The young man laughed and crossed his arms over his expensive button-down shirt.

Peter's face sunk and turned on his friend defensively. "Hey! I talk to plenty of girls!"

Mary Jane frowned. "I'm a girl."

Harry and Peter both turned on her at once.

"No you're not."

She narrowed her eyes.

The school bell rang and instinctively the teenagers still lingering around the front entrance headed inside as if magnetically drawn. The three friends took a few moments to stir, and together they left Harry's car behind, heading for the front entrance. Before the three of them broke up to head to their respective classes, they convened in the hallways, closing in on one another in a rough circle.

"Look, Pete." Harry smiled at his friend and placed a hand on Peter's shoulder, dark eyes serious, but in a friend to friend kind of way. "Don't sweat it. Some guys are just slower to blossom than others. You'll find Misses Right soon enough, trust me."

Mary Jane smiled in a sort of agreement and she turned in the same motion as Harry, the two of them heading in the same direction to begin their day. "Take it easy, buddy."

Peter didn't say much of anything, leaning against the lockers and watching them go with a bit of a smile himself, appreciating the words for what they were worth. Mary Jane spared him a single look over the strands of crimson over her shoulder before winking at him just as she left audible range. "See you around, Tiger."

In a few moments, Peter pushed off and started on his way, thinking about what Harry had said, and inwardly, finding himself amused at just how close his friend actually was…

Later…

"I know I should be studying for that big Physics test, but my Spider-Sense is driving me nuts. It must be all the stress. Maybe some fresh air will help clear my head." Spider-Man shot out a strand of webbing and swung upwards, increasing his elevation. He allowed the swinging arc to carry him up as far as the momentum would allow, hanging there in zero-gravity for a second or two before the pull of gravity began to take him ground wards and he caught himself with another line, jerking himself ahead. "I'd better be careful. Ever since I started doing the whole Super-Hero thing, my social life has started to take a nose dive into the drain."

He caught hold of a lamppost and spun around it once, his feet catching its surface in a kick that propelled him up rolling onto the roof of a nearby building. "Wait a minute, who am I kidding?"

A jump carried him into a dive off the edge of the building and he caught himself with a web line that carried him on to the gothic architecture of a church along the more residential district, and Spider-Man perched himself onto the head of a gargoyle, settling. "What social life?"

His head spun and his ears rung. Blotches of colour and disorientation filled his head with a stinging whine and Spider-Man shot his head to the direction of the street, his spider-sense drawing his attention to something down below. Someone screamed. He drew forward, trying to get a better look. Someone screamed again, this time in words.

"Oh my god! That bus is out of control!"

Peter jumped to his feet and jogged to the edge of the roof, leaping off.

Down below, a NY Line Bus swerved in and out of traffic, miraculously avoiding the sea of yellow taxicabs and other cars along the way, but at this rate, its luck wouldn't hold out for long. From the street, the cries of terror from the people trapped inside could be heard, and through the lurching and violent chaos inside the vehicle Gwen Stacy clutched the bar in her arms as tight as she could, eyes squeezed closed as she held on for dear life, so tightly she dared not even scream.

That was until she saw the streak of red and blue sweeping up onto the roof of the bus. Her pretty eyes flashed open wide.

Spider-Man was barely able to catch up with the bus at all. Whoever was driving had their foot stuck on the gas pedal, and the vehicle was easily going a hundred in middle of Queens. The super hero gripped the roof and kept as low as possible to decrease wind resistance. Up ahead the street swept upwards past the buildings to the Bridge to Manhattan. If this runaway train got onto the narrow freeway, it risked going overboard into the river. The gravity of the situation sunk in, literally, and Spider-Man began crawling. He made his way up to the emergency escape hatch just as the bus lurched violently into the lane of oncoming traffic. Peter's face went white under his mask. Oncoming headlights reflected off his lenses and thinking fast, he shot out a web line at an oncoming lamppost. He stood up on the speeding bus and pulled with all his might, turning the bus back onto the right lane. It was only a temporary solution, and he had to fight against physics itself to stay on his feet against the heavy wind resistance, forcing him to drop back down on his belly.

Inside, Gwen felt the bus sway and buckle under its own weight as it's steering was jarred every which-way. Eventually it would strike a bad angle and the whole thing would flip. Every time the weight inside was shifted unevenly, she thought for sure that this time was the one. But when two wheels dropped back down onto the street, she felt the lump of fear drop from her throat. Her eyes bled with terror and she gripped the bar tighter, squeezing her eyes closed as tenderly she whispered to herself. "Please… hurry…"

The emergency hatch tore free from its frame and with a sweep of his legs, Spider-Man dropped inside, bending his knees to absorb the impact as he hit the floor of the bus. Everyone inside let out a gasp of relief, although they weren't out of the water yet. "Everyone!" The masked hero cried, "Hold on and try not to be heavy!"

Gwen felt her heart palpitate and she hit her reddening face in her arm, squeezing her eyes closed.

Spider-Man darted to the front of the bus and put a hand on the driver's shoulder. "Hey, buddy… I don't mean to tell you how to do your job or anything…"

He spun the man around and his eyes widened, looking into his ghostly white, still face. The man wasn't breathing. He'd died in his seat. How, he wasn't sure. Maybe a heart attack. Peter swallowed and looked through the windshield, watching as the limit of the bridge steadily approached. It was now or never.

If he braked at this speed, the bus would spin out, and there was no time to decrease speed gradually. Spider-Man moved fast. Darting to the end of the bus, he stuck to the side and punched out the back window, shooting a web-line out to catch the steel support structure of the bridge. The bus heaved towards the edge and the front end smashed through the brass railings, tipping towards the water. Everyone screamed and panicked.

"Everyone stay still!" Gwen cried, holding on as tightly as she could, watching her hero with eyes wide. "Get away from the front!"

Spider-Man's breath was sucked from his body, as the weight of the bus was placed on his shoulders alone. The presence of Gwen had struck a dagger through his heart, putting undue pressure on him to perform. The weight shifted and Spider-Man was quick to compensate, pushing the thoughts from his head. Pulling with all his might, he worked his way up the web, levelling out the bus. The railing alone supporting them, the bus cradled in its bent frame, whined and shrieked, starting to give way. There wasn't much time.

"Quickly!" The masked young man called. "Everyone out!"

No one hesitated. Pushing through the glass, the some two-dozen people pushed their way through the bus with a measure of order, and one by one, helped each other through the opening. Little by little the weight was alleviated. Last came Gwen Stacy, starting to pull herself through the opening. She stopped and looked back at him, eyes concerned.

"Hurry, Gwen…" Peter coughed, his grip failing. "Don't worry about me."

Her eyes widened, and Peter swore inside his head. He'd used her name! What an idiot!

Her blue eyes glistened and she sat dumbstruck, mouth open slightly before breath was pushed past her lips. "How did you know…?"

The railing buckled, shrieked, groaned, and gave way. The bus dropped around him, falling like a shell past him, no longer supported by his web line, trapping Gwen inside.

"Gwen!!" He cried, watching the bus fall, her screams of terror following it up. "Hold on!!"

Pulling up on the elasticity of his web, pushing out as hard as he could, he kicked off the wall, and dive-bombing after her, Spider-Man was a missile.

Trapped inside, Gwen took hold of the window frame and tried with all her might to keep her head above the interior, despite gravity jerking her down inside the bus. If she fell inside, there was no way he could get to her in time. She just had to hold on for a while longer…

When the two had closed within a reasonable distance, Peter shot out a web line that stuck to the bus and jerked himself downward. He hit the back of the bus and immediately his feet adhered to its surface. Without wasting any time, he pulled Gwen from the vehicle by her arm, sheltered her against his chest and leapt into the air, shooting out a web line. At this range, it seemed impossible to catch the bridge. It seemed so far away…

"Please…" He begged, stuck in free-fall, Gwen's moon blonde hair whipping into his face as they fell. "Please…"

Their fall met with resistance and the two bounced on the web line, finally coming to a halt. Stricken with shock and fear, Gwen clung to her saviour and buried her face in his shoulder as slowly he began to climb, their ascent met by a roaring cheer of the some five hundred people standing, watching on the bridge above.

As soon as their feet touched the ground, she wrapped her arms around his neck and brought him up into a tight embrace, on the verge of tears. At first Peter just sort of stood there, bending awkwardly towards her before slowly he hugged her back, holding for a few seconds with eyes closed before he let her go, and wordlessly, moved to leave. She grabbed his arm and he turned towards her.

"Who… who are you?" Her eyes begged the question, and for a moment, Peter was stunned before without looking, he shot out another web line.

For a moment, there was silence, and awkwardly, he began. "I…" Something tugged at him and immediately Peter shook his head. Without another moment's hesitation, he grinned, starting away. "Just your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man!"

The crowd couldn't get enough of it, and away, he disappeared deeper into the city, swinging from building to building. Gwen stood on the bridge watching, and even as rescuers arrived and paramedics rushed victims to safety, she watched until the vague silhouette had long faded into the darkness…


End file.
